Over 70,000 British adults will not be allowed to vote this week – because they are in prison.

It is six years since the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a blanket ban on prisoners’ voting is unlawful. Campaigners have accused ministers of avoiding the issue for the sake of appearing tough on crime. But the government says that it is still considering the question. Under current rules, anyone serving a prison sentence at the time of an election is barred from voting. This applies even to short sentences of days or weeks.

‘Losing one’s liberty is punishment in itself,’ said Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform. She told the Friend that: ‘The government has a duty to encourage civic responsibility’ among prisoners.

But a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: ‘The issue of voting rights for prisoners is one that the government takes very seriously and that remains under careful consideration’. He said that a consultation process had recently closed and that the government is ‘analysing the responses’.

This is unlikely to satisfy campaigners for reform, who point out that ministers have already spent six years considering the European Court of Human Rights’s ruling. Frances Crook accused them of ‘avoiding this issue for far too long in a bid to look tough on crime’. She added: ‘prisoner voting shouldn’t be used as a political football’.

The issue caused controversy in Birmingham Hall Green, where Labour candidate Roger Godsiff, a sitting MP, distributed a leaflet featuring pictures of well-known criminals. It asked: ‘Do you want convicted murderers, rapists and paedophiles to be given the vote? The Lib Dems do.’

After complaints, the Labour Party insisted that the leaflet had not been sanctioned at national level and that no more copies would be distributed.

But Roger Godsiff refused to apologise, describing the Liberal Democrats’ policy as ‘black and white’. In response, the Liberal Democrats insisted that they would not give the vote to those currently in prison, but would in future allow judges to decide whether the vote should be removed when passing a sentence.

The Green Party would go further. A Green spokesperson told the Friend: ‘We believe that all prisoners should be allowed to vote’.